Tribalism in Libya has long remained an enigma, shrouded by the country's decades of isolation and the paucity of serious scholarship on the topic, especially in Western languages. Even when the country opened itself to visitors, the topic remained something of a taboo; the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi proclaimed his rule to be an antidote to the backwardness and parochialism of the tribes, even if he relied on tribes himself, especially in his final years. One could visit a bookstore in Tripoli in the mid-2000s, ask for a book on the tribes and be met with a blank stare or a hushed retort: ‘We don't have tribes here and we don't have any books on tribes.’ One would then be forced to revert to a limited number of older, European-language studies, many from the period of the Italian occupation or the British military administration.Footnote ¹

The collapse of the Gaddafi regime in 2011 saw a renewed interest in tribes, as outsiders struggled to discern the outlines of post-revolutionary politics and the key political and social authorities in the new landscape. A flood of Western diplomats, NGOs and intelligence officers rushed into the country, many with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, and immediately gravitated towards tribes as nodes of analysis and as interlocutors. As Libya descended into chaos, tribes were seen as mediators, buffers against extremism and perhaps even a foundation upon which to build the new state, given the hollowness of more formal institutions under Gaddafi. Still others, however, saw them as the primary engines of Libya's dissolution. In his own diagnosis for why Libya had failed after his 2011 military intervention, US President Barack Obama famously stated to a reporter, ‘The degree of tribal division in Libya was greater than our analysts had expected.’Footnote ²

Yet such a reading obscured the realities on the ground; tribal authority was often context dependent and hard to define, with lineages and genealogies muddied by alliances, migrations and intermarriages. Urbanisation, globalisation, media and the spread of other affiliations such as Salafism further complicated the picture. Libyans themselves were unclear about the tribal firmament; the Russian anthropologist Igor Cherstich, in one of the more thoughtful studies of tribes, noted, ‘I have never met a Libyan who knew the identity of his tribal head.’Footnote ³ Still, understanding tribalism is important, albeit with caveats and nuance. The country's legacy of tribes – their movements, alliances and wars – forms a rich narrative that colours and informs the present.

Enter the masterful work of the Benghazi-based scholar Faraj Najem. In the 1990s, while a doctoral student in the United Kingdom, Najem undertook a sweeping dissertation of Libyan tribes, focusing on the formative eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the rule of the Qaramanli dynasty. It is at once an encyclopaedic volume of vast synthesis, trenchant analysis and original research. The great value of his study was in conveying the findings of earlier studies on tribal genealogies, most notably by Italian orientalists and Arab authors, but at the same time adding fresh and rigorous scholarship.Footnote ⁴ Yet for years it was available only as a PDF, passed around approvingly by Libyan scholars and analysts as a go-to resource. Now, finally, it appears as a revised, soft-cover book, published by the Benghazi research centre that Najem oversees.

The book is remarkable in many respects. It captures the grand drama of Libya's tribes: the early comingling of Arab and Berber identities, followed by the arrival of the Ottomans and the to and fro of tribal migrations and conquests across the borders that define modern Libya. It unpacks the hierarchies between ‘elite’ and ‘client’ tribes, as well as the divisions between ‘interior’ and ‘coastal’ tribes. On the latter, the book connects this North African state to the Mediterranean basin in ways that are at once vivid and astounding; one learns that Andalusians, Circassians, Cretans, Jews and Greeks have all left their imprint on Libya.

Yet at the same time it describes, with an ethnographer's eye for detail, the physical culture and political economy of tribes and how the tribal milieu has been shaped by Libya's exacting climate. Consider this lovely passage on the built environment of Libya's oasis dwellers:

And though the book is focused on tribes, it also deals extensively with Libya's religious traditions, especially the beliefs and practices of its murabits (saints) and Sufi orders, which underpinned the authority of the Sanusi proto-state. On the Sanusis, Najem provides an important corollary to the work of Evans-Pritchard, highlighting for the first time in English the work of Arab historians.

This work will be a valuable resource for historians of Libya and the Maghrib, as well as anthropologists and scholars of Islamic history. Analysts seeking to understand present-day Libya will profit as well, provided they recognise that much has obviously changed since the nineteenth century. Still, the book's detailed kinship charts and maps shed light on the tribes who have emerged as key players in recent years, particularly Cyrenaican tribes like the Awaqir. More importantly, Najem's research forms an important corrective to those in Libya who seek to introduce revisionist narratives of tribal supremacy or separation. Here, for example, is a passage on the role of settlers from the western coastal city of Misrata in the founding of Benghazi:

What becomes clear from such insights and others in Najem's magisterial tome is that this nation of six million is ultimately a country of neighbours who, mixed and moulded together throughout the centuries, share similar fates. And that is cause for guarded hope.